


Flying

by Anonymous



Category: Billy Elliot (2000)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-17
Updated: 2007-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1628369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Request: Billy any time after the movie.<br/>Billy returning home. A short interlude with Tony, and a sudden realisation</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flying

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ro

 

 

Right I was asked for Billy either at school or visiting home. Here you go Ro, enjoy! Sorry isn't as long as I would have liked.

You can't cross the same river twice, Billy thinks with little regret, as he sits opposite his brother in the tiny cafe. Tony looks older than he ever has before, old and tired and hopeless, with lines pulling at the corners of his eyes, pinched privation of emotion and feeling. They've sat there in uneasy silence for about half an hour now, having inevitably run out of things to talk about some time after Billy realises that telling Tony he's been put into blocked shoes and actually allowed to dance in them for the first time, is really not going to mean the same thing to him, and telling him about getting drunk with Fabian and pretending to be Odette after getting chucked out of a pub isn't going to be that amusing either.

The silence is awkward but not entirely uncomfortable. The woman behind the counter is tired, wiping down the surfaces with a damp cloth, before putting the kettle on to boil. The cracked, worn formica table is covered in the newspaper Tony had brought with him, and Billy doesn't need to look to see the scantily dressed woman cavorting on the page. The door opens, and a voice interrupts their private thoughts. "Tony!"

When Billy looks up at the sudden squeal, his face creases with half remembering some vital detail. The girl, woman even in front of him seems a little familiar but he can't imagine who on earth he would know like this. She's a mixture of contrasts. Pretty with near spaced eyes and a mouth that seems to have a smile glued to it, yet she is plastered in unevenly applied makeup, mascara that has clumped to her eyelashes, blusher applied just a little too thick, lipstick that makes her mouth appear a red gash. Having spent the last few years with people to whom makeup application was more of an art than anything, Billy winces just a little. The rest of her is the same, slender figure in tarty clothes that show just a little too much of everything, that seem to have no sense of moderation. Her belly curves softly under the garishly pink top, and he realises with a start that she is pregnant. She kisses Tony once briefly on the lips and he merely grunts and pushes a chair at her. She collapses onto it, dropping the Woolworth bag she is carrying with a sigh of relief, and smiles at him. "I'm Tracey," she announces brightly, too loudly, and Billy feels himself cringe a bit.

"I'm Billy," he says politely and unnecessarily as it turns out.

"I know," she crows, and grins at him amicably. "Tony told me about you," and her face lights up into a proud, warm smile that he finds himself bemusedly returning, not quite sure why he feels so pleased. She jerks her head at Tony. "He was so proud of you that he almost burst. And I admire you duck. Get out of this place to somewhere better is what I say."

"It's good enough for you and the babby," Tony murmurs still not raising his head from his perusal of the sports pages.

"Well we don't have no choice do we?" she retorts, and for a moment something flashes in her eyes that is not quite despair, but too close to it for comfort. Billy is fascinated by her, by the overripe indulgence and the sense of deja vu. This is one of the girls he used to stare at when he lived here, one of the tarty girls who stayed out too late, and drank too much, who is father used to sniff at, and his brother call slag. It is with a slowly dawning understanding that he realises. This is his future sister in law, and the child she bears is his nephew or niece. It is with an effort of imagination that he calls Fabian to mind, his room mate and fellow dancer, with whom his relationship is tentatively blossoming into something that he can't quite put a name to yet, but which is light years away from here. He contrasts Fabian's sleek blond hair with the dyed mass of curls over Tracey's shoulders, the slim carriage of his best friend, with her slowly rounding figure, and the fundamental difference hits him with the force of a hammer. He doesn't belong here anymore, and Fabian and Tracey become a symbol of that for him in his mind. He knows what this might make him, all the contemptuous words flung at him by family and ex-friends- fag, pouf, queer coming true, but it doesn't seem to matter anymore.

Billy suddenly feels stifled by the heavy atmosphere, the not quite loathing that seems to fill the cafe. "I should go see Dad," he mutters and makes to stand up. He is feeling sad, and an intense loneliness has overtaken him, a longing for what has become home. The bustle of boarding school life, the comfort of practice, the voices that seem so different compared to the North. He knows he sounds different, it is not something he can help, though he'll never admit to hours spent painstakingly speaking differently, adopting the sharpened vowels, and drawling tone of his new friends, rather than the broad consonants and thick accent of his hometown. He looks different with his longer hair, his clearer skin, toned trained body that moves with the effortless ease of the dancer, rather than hunched walk of the miner. Even the way he thinks is different. He thinks in colour, movement, music, art as though his life is on a stage, and he knows that Tony doesn't feel that

Tony stands up as well and they awkwardly stare at each other, neither sure what on earth to say. One hour Billy has spent with him, one hour that merely brings home their differences, the way their lives have diverged. Looking at his brother's face though, Billy is still aware of the tug of family. There is a part within him that belongs here, belongs down a mine, or carrying a hod, belongs with the girl next door, and the screaming baby upstairs, and he doesn't yet know if he can reconcile that part of himself to what he has now become.

He is too different, and the fact is in everything he says or does. His life has utterly changed, and for a moment he feels guilt over what has happened. If things had been different, then it could be Tony where he is now, and Billy looking at his brother, and feeling not quite good enough, because where he has a future, Tony has dust. He brushes those thoughts away impatiently. They feel cruel and disloyal, especially after all the sacrifices his family made to keep him where he is today, and yet treachously they return to his mind when he least expects.

Then Tony leans forward and gives him a rough hug, and Billy allows himself to close his eyes for a moment and feel eleven again. "You get them," mumbles Tony, and Billy can feel tears spring too readily to his eyes. He blinks them back (he might be a pouf but he isn't stupid,) and nods. He hesitantly kisses Tracey on the cheek.

"Good luck with the baby," he murmurs, and she smiles up at him through her dyed hair, too thick makeup and sweet smile.

"Thanks love. Good luck as well."

Then he's out, and he's free and he's running. And he's never coming back.

 


End file.
